


City of Golden Shadow

by icarus_chained



Series: Shadow, Star and Snow [1]
Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Bittersweet, Dreams and Nightmares, Enemies, Fear, Hope, Love, M/M, Pain, Prompt Fic, Rescue, Soul Bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-02
Updated: 2014-06-02
Packaged: 2018-02-03 05:13:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1732433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sandy rescues a shattered Pitch from the Nightmares, and the consequences of that black arrow are brought into sharp and pained relief.</p>
            </blockquote>





	City of Golden Shadow

The shallow sleep of an exhausted terror fed nightmares like nothing else. Pitch knew that, even if it hadn't been a particularly personal knowledge until now. He'd watched millions of children live out the shadows of waking terrors inside their dreams, over and over again across the centuries, and until this moment he had never known how utterly soul-draining an experience it could be.

He shouldn't have let himself fall asleep. He, of all people, knew better than that. With every remaining Nightmare in the world hunting him, the last thing he should have done was allowed exhaustion to take over and lure him down, leave him helpless before them. But terror _was_ draining. Terror, and the loss of belief. Between them they'd carved him down to less than nothing, worn him away to shreds of tattered shadow, and not even he could have run forever. He knew that. He knew he could never have expected to outlast them.

At first, the nightmares were little more than a welter of confused imagery, atavistic spurts of fear and fragments of every despairing thought he'd ever had. An emptiness, the sensation of something cold and bright and familiar, just within reach, and then darting away, laughing, forgetful, unconcerned. A frenzy of rage directed against him, a storm of blows struck by glaring bursts of colour, laughing figures shining bright with power and strength. A hurricane of teeth and wings, of black, equine faces tearing at him, feeding upon him. And then ... then a horrifying sense of dissolution, a screaming as his consciousness faded to nothing, the sensation of oblivion as the last belief in his existence faded away. He roared, he thrashed, he screamed in helpless fury, caught in the terror's thrall as somewhere above him, in the waking world, the last of his creations fed upon him.

It seemed, he thought, with a tearing sort of humour, that fear fed on itself as easily as on anything else. If not more. A nice little irony to fade into nothingness to. _Hah._

Not the worst of them, though. Not the worst irony to plague him in this shattered, fearsome twilight. He clawed himself onward, asleep or awake, he wasn't even sure, less exhausted and more half-dead, and around him, in the midst of the shards of nightmares, came the most hateful of all ironies. Eddies of light, glimpses in the gaps between writhing darkness. Distant arcs of golden sand, darting and weaving like serpents in the shadows. Relief, for someone else. For _anyone_ else. Some glimpse of wonder to stave off the nightmares, some fragment of _dreams_ to offer reprieve.

He rasped out a laugh, harsh and cackling, cracked all down the middle. He laughed, heaving himself onwards in a hopeless crawl, laughing in giddy despair as the lights and the nightmares both drew ever closer. His own creations to feed upon him, and his best enemy to finish him off. Dreams, to finish what nightmares started. Yes, oh yes. Such a terrible, _wonderful_ irony to die to. The best. Only the best. Nothing but that for the Boogeyman.

Something wrenched inside him, a tearing he didn't quite understand, and he cried out suddenly. Shoved one grey hand into his own mouth a second later, because damned if the _King of Nightmares_ would scream, not for anyone, but it was too late. It broke something, inside and out, and the next second the world _shattered_. The shadows tore around him, shredded with a distant screaming of nightmares, and all of a sudden there was only his own shaking, and the silent presence of the worst and most ironic of his fears.

He panted, hunched in on himself, bit down with sharp teeth on the fist still caught between them. He didn't look. He _refused_ to look. All the world was shining suddenly with a soft and golden light, and he _would not_ look at it. Now or ever. He was nothing, he was less than nothing, he was a defeated fragment of a thing, but if nothing else remained to him, he would have some scrap of pride even still. He was Pitch Black, he was the Boogeyman, he was the oldest of Nightmares, and if he had to fade it would be as _him_. If oblivion waited then he'd greet it on his own terms, or not at all.

Or so he told himself, at least. So he begged himself, clutching at remnants of pride as he curled uselessly on the floor, a huddle of shadows trying to hide itself against the shining around it. He snarled silently, bit his knuckles bloody, and ignored how pathetic he must look, how pathetic he must _be_ , in favour of the only defiance left to him. Not much. Not much of anything, for a half-forgotten shadow. But in terror, you used whatever you had left.

There was silence, for a long minute. Or only a fraction of a second, maybe. Fear and dreams alike stretched time past all recognition when their hold was upon you, and he was in the grip of both now. Either or. Both fatal. Both familiar.

There were no words for how he hated this enemy. Even now. 

Especially now.

Sandy didn't speak. Whether real or dream or nightmare, the Sandman remained as mute and silent as always, his presence alone enough to fill the void in the darkness where fear should be. Where fear still was, crouched shaking on the floor and waiting for annihilation. Without any words at all, the Sandman made his presence known.

The hand that found his was tiny, compared to his own. A little fragment of starshine, of wonder, too small to ever pose a challenge. If you hadn't seen. If you didn't know. Stronger than all the terrors of the world, if you did. It found him softly, touched him gently, and reached with utmost care to pry his shaking fingers out from between his teeth. His scream bubbled after it, completely unbidden, unwilling, and Pitch screwed his eyes only tighter, snarled silently to himself in hatred for the indignity. For the _weakness_. Sandy caught his hand tighter, more firmly, reached with stubborn determination to press warmth into fading flesh and wring more shattered cries out of him. Pitch let him. He couldn't stop him.

" _Damn you_ ," he snarled, thick and bubbling with exhausted tears. "Damn you, damn you. Leave me _be_." 

He snapped teeth shut on the _please_ , strangled it dead in his throat, but some fragment of it must have escaped anyway. Some glimmer of it must still have found his enemy, some knowledge of his pleading. The light flared, sands hissing distantly in agitation, and Sandy only leaned closer, only pressed his round, tiny body into the curl of Pitch's limbs, into the shadow clutched desperately at his chest. At his heart. Sandy pressed close, warm and worried and shaking, and Pitch curled convulsively around him with a cry of desperate anger. Hate, pain. _Fury_ , like nothing else, and a relief he dared not ever name.

"Leave me alone," he managed, pressing bony hands around his enemy, clinging helplessly to give the lie to it. "Sandy, _please_. Leave me alone. Let me go."

A hand patted his face, an arm squirming out from where it had been caught between their chests to nudge his chin, his cheeks, brushing over his closed eyes in silent request. Plea, maybe. It shook oddly, that hand. It moved with uneven force, more so than Pitch thought it meant to. Sandy wrapped the other arm around him, as much as the stubby limb could manage, trapping Pitch close against him. Not that Pitch could allow anything else. Not that he could bear to let himself escape.

{Open your eyes,} the hand asked him silently. {Look at me, Pitch. Please, open your eyes.} And he didn't want to, he wanted anything else but that, but he'd no choice either. No choice, if he ever wanted this to end. If he ever wanted to be let go.

So he answered. So he surrendered, bright and bitter, and opened his eyes to the light and the sand, the dreams, the city of golden shadow that the Sandman had built to shield them both from the darkness. Pitch opened his eyes, the only part of him that matched the wonder around them, dark and golden themselves, and looked up into the round, terrified face of his oldest and most powerful enemy. Into the face of Sandy, who he had so recently killed.

And Sandy, seeing him in turn, only smiled, bright and beaming and wide with relief. Only squeezed him lightly, an awkward sort of half-hug, and shook his head in exhausted happiness that his enemy still lived, still had strength enough to glare at him in terrified hatred. Sandy, Sandman, the worst nightmare Pitch could imagine, grinned in triumph to have found him still alive.

"... I hate you," Pitch whispered softly. The ghosts of words, of _feelings_ , intangible fragments from a chest too numb with terror to mean them. "I hate you," said the Nightmare King, and the Sandman nodded sadly, and held him only closer, only more gently yet.

{I know,} came the symbols, flashed in an older language than most anyone on this planet could imagine. {I know,} Sandy agreed, with all the weight of their history behind him, and reached up to brush at the tears trickling still from Pitch's eyes. {I'm sorry. I don't know how to fix it.}

The laugh rasped out of him, sharp and sudden, almost shocking them both. It tore out around the terror, around the hatred, humour in the face of horror, irony in the face of enmity. Everything that blasted frost child had taught him, everything Jack had flung in his face and used to bring him low. Pitch snarled at it, struggled with it, but it spilled from him nonetheless. It _comforted_ him nonetheless, in that ever-bitter way that was all his nature could allow. It hurt, it tore, and in itself that tearing was still a comfort.

"I killed you," he said, a black sort of amusement. Just to remind the stupid bastard. Just to point it out. Sandy blinked at him, nonplussed, and Pitch only laughed the harder. "I shot you in the back. You _remember_ that, don't you? You remember what I've done to you?"

Sandy tilted his head, curious and thoughtful, and then ... then he looked away, a strange look creasing his round face, a pensive expression that looked odd, if not unfitting, upon it. Pitch stared up at him, exhausted and mirthful and curious, and watched the shadows settle on his enemy's face and throw the brightness of it only into sharper relief.

{It wasn't death,} the Sandman gestured gently, distant and subdued, but still firm. The symbols shaped themselves slowly but decisively, never faltering. {It was ... this, I think. Here. This place. Dreams and nightmares. Fear and wonder. I went ... inside myself. Me. Not me. Somewhere I hadn't known. You sent me there. It was part of you. Of us both. Does that make sense?}

Terror spiked in Pitch's breast, a flare that surged up all unwilling, and Sandy looked back at him. Sandy met his eyes, dark and terrified, and smiled ruefully down at him. Recognising. Knowing. Yes, that made sense. Yes, Pitch understood it.

They were joined. Pitch had shot an arrow of shadow, of fear and nightmare, of corrupted dreamsand, straight into Sandy's heart. He'd planted a shard of himself at the base of all the Sandman was, turned his enemy into himself, if only briefly. And when Sandy had come back, when he had re-emerged ... there had been a part of Pitch still left in him. There must have been. A window. A door.

A way for Sandy to reach _back_. A way to find Pitch where all the Nightmares of the world had driven him, to reach inside the half-world of night-terrors that an exhausted slumber had rendered him to, and use it to build a dream around him. A city of golden shadow, in which to snare a nightmare king.

"Faith _shadow_ ," he whispered, stunned and horrified. "I didn't know. I didn't _mean_." His voice cracked, shattered all over again, and he stared wildly up at his captor. "Sandy, no. Please don't. I don't want it. Please _don't_."

Sandy flinched, crumpled, his own horror echoing back. His own pain, a shadow of the despair that must have swamped him when that arrow pierced his heart. A glimmer of the darkness that would live in him now and always, at the heart of the joy and the faith that made him Sandy, that made him dreams and wonder and starshine. A part of Pitch, his old despair, always in Sandy's breast.

And a part of Sandy, a touch of his hope and his defiance and his joy, always now in Pitch's. Warmth, that Pitch had felt seeping, and had not understood. Until now. Until too late.

"... What have I done?" he asked, with distant wonder, distant pain. Reaching up to trace Sandy's face in turn, to trail grey fingers across weary cheeks. "Sandy. What have I let us become?"

Sandy bit his lip, a fluttering of his hand on Pitch's cheek, drifting up to draw hair like ink-shadows back from a grey brow. Petting him gently, his smile wry with all the sorrow and warmth of an ancient little heart.

{A coin?} he answered, the symbol spun up to hang between them, woven of sand and shadows both. Dark on one side, light on the other, dreams and terrors melded together by the shadow in the Sandman's heart. Sandy hunched inwards, pressed himself back into the narrow strength of Pitch's chest, and held it out between them with something the Nightmare King thought might have been hope. {And maybe ... maybe someday a whole?}

It hurt. It stabbed, the tearing inside him, the relief he'd dared not name. The _comfort_ he dared not name. Hope. Memory. Wonder. Joy. All terrible things, bright and fearsome things, lodged now where they had no business being. _Inside_ him. In his chest, warm and strong where they should not ever be, and comforting where he should never have allowed. A dream, a dream, a speck of golden sand in a black and empty chest. Sandy, where there should be only Pitch.

It hurt. Oh, so badly it hurt. And yet. In all these years, in all these centuries, as the strength faded within him and the shadows, the terrors, had gathered close, hadn't he wanted something maybe like this? Some faith, some strength, some glimmer of the brightness and the belief that the others enjoyed. Some sense, as only he and perhaps Jack might understand, that he was not _alone_. That he was not forgotten. That there was someone, somewhere, who held some scrap of him inside them, enough to know who he was. Enough to leave some scrap inside him in turn, and remind him they were there.

Not like this. Not ever like this. He had not wanted, did not want. It hurt, would never not hurt, tearing deep inside him. Anathema, agony, _irony_.

But it comforted too. The worst of all. It hurt, and yet he did not dare to let it go.

Not now. Not ever.

He crumpled. Collapsed back, neither pride nor pain holding him together now, a spill of limbs and shadows gathered loosely around a star. Sandy flickered in alarm, half-expressed symbols flashing starlight between them, but Pitch couldn't bring himself to care. Couldn't bring himself to act. Laughter bubbled back, joy and mirth as the ice cracked fatally beneath him, and he let it loose. He laughed, a rasping, guttered laugh, for what he had become. Him. Sandy. Even Jack. All the terror in the world could not have prepared him, all the fear and horror of centuries in the dark. It could not have warned him, could not have borne him through, so he turned to humour instead. Turned to the bitter, shining thread of joy, and the warmth of that terrible irony.

"And so falls the Nightmare King," he giggled, fey and giddy, and grinned for the bright, worried humour in the Sandman's eyes. For the understanding there, from a creature who had seen the inside of Pitch's soul, and who knew the darkness there. Sandy smiled down at him, wry and pained and hesitant, and Pitch could do naught but return the favour. "Beauty to slay the beast, hmm? Oh, _Sandy_."

{It's a classic,} Sandy agreed, soft and sweetly sorrowful, and leaned down then to kiss him. Dry, chaste, the rasp of golden lips against grey. The star and the shadow, resting gently against each other, all their terror warm between them. Pitch sighed, sundered, and reached up to cup that face between his hands, to cradle it as he pressed upwards into the brightness there. Not so chaste, his kiss. Not so gentle. A shadow slipping between Sandy's teeth, sharp and sweet with old pain, pressing towards the shards they'd shared between them. A warm, terrible sort of thing.

"... I hate you," he murmured, his hands grey and calm about his enemy's face, pulling back a little to smile at him. "Always and forever, Sandman. The shadows don't forget."

Sandy tilted his head, soft and shining, and brought up one tiny hand to cup Pitch's cheek in turn. {No,} he shimmered, smiling too. {And nor do stars. Not even murdered ones.}

Well then, Pitch thought, curling his enemy close. Well. That's alright, then. 

Isn't it?


End file.
